Abstract

This records the experience of Korean-born adult adoptees, a significant global community of over 200,000 people living primarily in the United States, but with members located worldwide. The global community of intercountry adoptees represents a migration of children from the global South to the global North, and Kim examines the historical framework of this adoption process that began following the devastation of the Korean War. The arrival and settlement of child adoptees with their new family is considered, as is the development of bi-cultural identity and the phenomena of revisiting the country of origin on adulthood. This account realigns established images away from the Hollywood hype, and away from images of the adoptee as a rescued victim orphan, and instead presents adoptees as adults making their own life choices. The post Cold War era of globalisation is sometimes referred to as a borderless world, and the experience of intercountry adoptees constitutes part of this discourse.